I recently read an article over on The Art of Manliness entitled The Importance of Developing and Maintaining Your Social Fitness, and though it worthy of sharing here. The article opens with:
Started in 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development represents the longest longitudinal study on happiness ever conducted. It set out to follow a group of men through every stage of their lives, from youth to old age, and continues to study their descendants.
The Harvard Study aimed to discover what makes human beings flourish, and its overarching conclusion was this: it’s all about good relationships. The Harvard Study has found that the quality of a person’s relationships has the biggest influence on their health and happiness.
Robert Waldinger, the current director of the Harvard Study, uses a great phrase to refer to this relational factor: social fitness. However, in the book he co-authored, The Good Life, he never directly explains and unpacks what the concept of social fitness involves.
Below, we’ll take a stab at doing so.
The article then goes on to detail the following points:
• What Is Social Fitness?
• The Parallels Between Physical and Social Fitness
• Physical and social fitness were once defaults, but now require intention to maintain.
• Ignoring your physical and social fitness results in serious health consequences.
• Physical and social fitness offer freedom from and freedom to.
• If you don’t use your physical and social fitness, you lose it.
• Some people are more inclined towards physical and social fitness than others, but everybody needs them all the same.
• Cultivating physical and social fitness constitutes both a self-interested exercise and an act of service.
• Maintaining physical and social fitness requires endless monotonous exercise, but when you need it, you’ll be glad you have it.
• You’ve got to regularly exercise your physical and social fitness whether you feel like it or not.
• Even when you don’t feel like exercising your physical and social fitness, you’re always glad you did.
You can read the entire article here.
Follow-Up: I’ve since discovered this article entitled 6 tips to boost your social fitness, which covers some general topics: Start with you • Put in the time (and have fun doing it)! • Keep it real • Show you’re listening • Be the excitement magnifier • When it breaks, fix it
You can read the entire article here.
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